


desert flower bloom

by sansakatara



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Anti Olenna Tyrell, Anti Tyrell, Arianne Martell POV, Bonding, Cousins, Dorne (A Song of Ice and Fire), Dornish Culture & Customs (A Song of Ice and Fire), Female Friendships, Honestly does this have a plot, House Martell, Humor, Hypocrisy, Shandystone, Sunspear (A Song of Ice and Fire), because thats what she deserves, not really just Arianne being happy, you can blame tumblr for this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 21:13:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29532498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sansakatara/pseuds/sansakatara
Summary: Tyene smiled. "Obara is called Sand like me and the rest of our sisters, but she was born in the Reach.  Shouldn't she then have a claim to the name Flowers, as bastards do to Snow in the North and Hill in the Westerlands?"A conversation that takes place between a princess and her bastard cousin, on the ride back to Sunspear from Shandystone.
Relationships: Arianne Martell & Doran Martell, Arianne Martell & Obara Sand, Arianne Martell & Oberyn Martell, Arianne Martell & Sand Snakes, Arianne Martell & Sarella Sand, Arianne Martell & Tyene Sand, Oberyn Martell/Ellaria Sand, Robert Baratheon/Delena Florent, Selyse Baratheon/Stannis Baratheon
Kudos: 11





	desert flower bloom

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place circa 290 AC, just a week before Arianne's 14th name-day. I do worry a bit that I might have made Arianne's pov too mature. Arianne's smart and strongly empathetic, but she's also just a thirteen-year-old girl in this. Still, I had fun writing this.

Countless stars served as handmaidens to the luminescent moon when they departed the lonely ruins of Shandystone and were making their way back home again.

If they keep a steady pace on their horses, they will reach Sunspear before daybreak. However, they have enough sustenance to keep them going if a night's ride becomes two or three. And Arianne will never consider having to spend more time in the company of her uncle and cousins an ill thing. Two of them rode with her, Tyene and Sarella, while Uncle Oberyn led them in front. The rest- Obara, Nymeria, and little Elia named in honour of Arianne's aunt, waited for them in Sunspear.

In just over a week, Arianne will celebrate her fourteenth name-day with her family and various lords in attendance. In two years she will be sixteen and a woman grown, by the laws of Westeros. In time, Rhoynar custom will see her ascend to the ruling seat of Dorne; the throne held by her father Prince Doran and his mother Princess Loreza before him. But Arianne promises herself that she will not become another name that gets lost in history. She will have a name that all of Dorne and perhaps the rest of Westeros too will remember. A name any person will be as familiar with as their own. 

Arianne's head is filled with these dreams when Tyene speaks. "You know Arianne, Sarella reading up on Dorne's history with the _dear_ Tyrells made me realize something about Obara."

Arianne raised an eyebrow at Tyene, whose eyes were full of mischief. "And what great revelation is that?" She asked, half-way torn between amusement and scepticism. Her uncle's eldest daughter, 17-year-old Obara, is the last person that comes to Arianne's mind when thinking of the Tyrells or the Reach. 

Tyene smiled. "Obara is called Sand like me and the rest of our sisters, but she was born in the Reach. Shouldn't she then have a claim to the name Flowers, as bastards do to Snow in the North and Hill in the Westerlands?"

Arianne smirked. _Obara would not take kindly to being called a flower._ Still, it was not always as straightforward as that.

"If Obara has any such claims, I'm sure she'd be glad to surrender it. And plus, my Father told me once that the place where you are _raised_ can sometimes count more than the place of your birth. Nymeria was born in Volantis, but she has spent too much time here in Dorne for her to be called anything else. King Robert's whelp is called Edric Storm, even though they say he was born in the Crownlands before Stannis sent him to Storm's End." 

Doubtless, the king had other whelps as well, but they were nameless to Arianne. She only knew this one's name thanks to the matter of his conception. Not only was his mother a maiden of noble birth- cousin to King Robert's own good-sister in fact, but it was whispered how Robert had carried Delena Florent upstairs to the bedchamber and broke in the wedding bed the night of Stannis' wedding. The first time she had heard the story, Arianne felt a stab of pity for Stannis' bride. She would have been nervous already, getting married. Humilation would not have helped at all. 

Still, years later, Arianne will think of how hypocritical people are. Ellaria remarks that Olenna Tyrell called her the Serpent's Whore when she and Uncle Oberyn had visited Kingslanding. A name that likely came about because the Tyrells blamed Oberyn for Willas Tyrell's injury, although Arianne thinks it is also owed to Ellaria's own bastard birth. As an old woman, Arianne will think of Olenna Tyrell and her lot as those lacking sincere convictions. Happy to insult Ellaria for her birth but happy enough to marry their daughter to one for a crown. And as for her uncle, he had bastards, yes, but he had never dishonoured her father the way Robert did Stannis.

"I should like to see the Reach, one day." Sarella pipes up. "I'd go to the Citadel and earn more links than Father did." 

"You'd have to disguise yourself as a boy, for that to happen," Tyene told her younger sister, who pouted. She then addressed Arianne again. "Perhaps you have the right of it."

Arianne thinks of Obara, a Dornishman's daughter, and the Tyrells. She thinks of the desert flowers that bloom here, and remembers how Lord Harlan Tyrell and his army were lost forever in the sands of Dorne during the First Dornish War. A war in which the Tyrells were on the losing side.

Arianne shrugged. "If Obara is a flower, then she is a desert flower, like the Maripoppy-"

"Marisopa Lily," Sarella supplies.

Arianne flashed a smile of thanks at Sarella. "Anyway, a flower can thrive in the desert." She paused and then continued. "Just as long as they're not a Tyrell."

They laugh long and hard, their laughter as bright as the stars above. 


End file.
